Gerry LaFemina: Security
My carry-on flagged for protein
bars that might be plastique, & I failed
the swab test, some residue battery acid
or fertilizer on my fingertips.
Cynthia Atkins: Making Lunch
I pack a thermos, 2 cookies, tart apple slices that will later smile at you from a bag—My noontime missive, a text of seduction.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: I was twenty then
The glint of those stares —
a flash of mica — offered to me &
just like that, I felt my loneliness shatter
Jan-Mitchell Sherrill: Two love poems
Come with me
to the river again: we will test Heraclitus,
kiss deep at the tender point of sleepless change.
Paul Hostovsky: Wincing at the Beautiful
So my friend Phil is telling me how
he can’t get a date
how he loves women and how
they’re always giving him looks
so I ask him what kind of looks
Elizabeth Romero: What My Mother Said
think of my love
as a red glass button
hanging on a threadbare dress
Kenneth Fearing: LOVE, 20 Cents The First Quarter Mile
I forgive you for being beautiful and generous and wise.
I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon you, in short, for being you.
Scott Silsbe: She Got My Mind Messed Up
Is something burning? Is something here
on fire? It smells like something here is
burning or on fire. It might be in my head.
BJ Ward: In Memoriam | The Victims of the Bowling Green Massacre
Here’s to the blood that wasn’t shed,
That still courses through hearts and
untroubled heads—
Rachel Hadas: Trying to Get to School
But making my way from A to B
could not be managed easily.
Locked courtyard, blocked alleys, a high wall –
I had to cross or climb them all.
Video: Joe Biden and Elizabeth Alexander discuss “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
President-elect Joe Biden, poet Elizabeth Alexander, psychologist Angela Duckworth, and a chorus of working fathers and sons join Poetry in America host Elisa New to reflect on Robert Hayden’s sonnet “Those Winter Sundays.”
Vox Populi: A note from the editor
Please forgive this blatant self-promotion, but I want to share with you a link to a review of my new collection of poems American Ash in the highly regarded and popular magazine Cultural Weekly, curated by Alexis Rhone Fancher.
Hayden Saunier: How I Suit Up for Winter Storms
Boots from my son’s eighth grade year,
outgrown far faster than the heart-deep
humiliations he bore for being gay
that I could not protect him from.
William Stafford: Traveling through the Dark
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
